“To hear the mayor of Amatrice say his village no longer exists and knowing that there are children among the victims, is very upsetting for me,” he said.

Civil Protection Chief Fabrizio Curcio classed the quake as “severe”. The shocks were strong enough to be felt 150 kilometres away in Rome, where authorities ordered structural tests on the Colosseum.

Some of the worst damage was suffered in Pescara del Tronto, a hamlet near Arquata in the Marche region where the bodies of the dead were laid out in a children’s play park.

With residents advised not to go back into their homes, temporary campsites were being established in Amatrice and Accumoli as authorities looked to find emergency accommodation for more than 2,000 people.

Amatrice is a hilltop beauty spot famed as the home of amatriciana, one of Italy’s favourite pasta sauces, and is a popular destination for Romans seeking cool mountain air at the height of the summer.

It was packed with visitors when the quake struck at 3:36am (0136 GMT).

Three minutes later the clock on the village’s 13th-century tower stopped.

Out of the blue

The first quake measured 6.2, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), which said it occurred at a shallow depth of 10 kilometres.

It measured 6 according to Italian monitors, who put the depth at only four km. A 5.4-magnitude aftershock followed an hour later.

Italy is often shaken by earthquakes, usually centred on the mountainous spine of the boot-shaped country.

In 2009, a 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck close to the university city of L’Aquila in the Abruzzo region and left more than 300 people dead.

That disaster led to lengthy recriminations over lax building controls and the failure of authorities to warn residents that a quake could be imminent.

David Rothery, Professor of Planetary Geosciences at Britain’s Open University, said Wednesday’s quake had been similar to the 2009 one.

“Both occurred at a shallow depth, which exacerbates the shaking at the surface,” he said.

“Unlike the L’Aquila quake, which was preceded by swarms of smaller quakes and led to claims — unjustified in my view — that the eventual big quake should have been predicted, this one appears to have struck out of the blue.”

The Jordan Times

The Jordan Times is an independent English-language daily published by the Jordan Press Foundationsince October 26, 1975. The Jordan Press Foundation is a shareholding company listed on the Amman Stock Exchange.